Trump was joking about ‘less testing’? Sure, I believe it … hah!

Donald John “Knee-Slapper in Chief” Trump has no discernible sense of humor that any of us can detect.

He rarely guffaws. From what I have read he doesn’t watch movies. He lacks any semblance of self-deprecation. However, the dude does have this annoying habit of relying on others’ excuses for the stupidity that flows out of his pie hole.

He told that sparse gathering in Tulsa, Okla., over the weekend that we ought to have “less testing” of the COVID-19 virus because it would drive down the number of people being infected. I saw him say it. He didn’t wink at the audience. He didn’t say, “Just kidding, folks.” He let the idiocy stand.

Oh, but then comes that trade “expert” who comments on matters far from his wheelhouse. Peter Navarro said Trump’s remark was “clearly tongue in cheek.”

We’ve heard this dodge before from Trumpkins who seek to cover The Donald’s ample backside. He blurts out something stupid and his team of sycophants says, “Aww, he was just kidding. Making a joke. He was being ‘sarcastic.'”

We are asked to buy into that baloney. This guy says so many stupid utterances, he lies with such astonishing frequency that we cannot believe anything, not a single thing that he says. Nor can we believe the efforts of his team to cover his a** when he blurts the idiocy out.

This is the same guy who said he preferred that a cruise ship full of passengers remain stranded off shore because letting them come ashore would drive up his COVID-19 infection “numbers.” He said that, too, with a straight face!

So we’re asked to believe that this Tulsa trash talk about “less testing” to detect the killer virus is a joke?

Don’t wait too long to shut it down, governor

(Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

“To state the obvious, COVID-19 is now spreading at an unacceptable rate in Texas, and it must be corralled,” (Gov.. Greg) Abbott said during a news conference at the Texas Capitol in Austin.

There you have it. The Texas governor is beginning to sound alarmed — although it’s of the “somewhat alarmed” variety about the pandemic that is showing new signs of life … and is bringing more death to human beings in Texas and around the country.

“Corralling” the virus needs to occur, to state the other obvious element of this story.

Abbott has been blaming young people for being cavalier about the threat the virus is bringing. He said they aren’t observing “social distancing” guidelines.

For the life of me I do not understand why the governor doesn’t issue an order requiring businesses to mandate face masks among everyone who enters their establishments. Nor do I get why he resists local governments from mandating social distancing, restricting occupancy, demanding that Texans behave in a manner that limits the spread of the killer viral infection.

He’s not doing that. Abbott today said that Texans should take voluntary measures to avoid becoming infected. Voluntary? How is that going to work, governor. The state opened up its beaches and Texans rushed to Gulf Coast by the thousands, ignoring social distancing recommendations.

The Texas Tribune reports: Texas has broken its record for the number of people hospitalized with the virus for 11 consecutive days. On Monday, that number was 3,711. Saturday saw the highest number of new daily reported cases yet — 4,430. The positivity rate, presented by the state as a seven-day average, has increased to 8.8%, on par with where it was in late April.

I want to acknowledge that my wife and I are continuing to observe a “shelter in place” policy in our home. We aren’t staying home 24/7. We are taking our recreational vehicle out on occasion, but limiting our visits to state parks; we camp in our fifth wheel and stay far, far away from other RV campers. That all said, we have no intention of entering a restaurant, a bowling alley, a movie theater for any form of recreational activity. Our visits to retail establishments will include face masks, sanitizing liquid and sanitary wipes.

I don’t mention this to suggest that we are paragons of virtue in this crisis. I mention it only to suggest that others could observe the need to take greater care to avoid exposing themselves or others to a virus that could kill them.

If they don’t, then our government leaders need to frighten the bejeebers out of them.

Trump practices a form of political levitation

(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

This brand of levitation we keep witnessing from Donald John Trump continues to astound me.

He has returned to the political campaign trail. He convened a rally in Tulsa, Okla., telling us 1 million people sought tickets to the arena. He had the rally, but it was attended by something fewer than 7,000 die-hard Trumpkins.

Trump’s base continues to hold at around 42 percent and yet the man himself doesn’t tell them anything new. He offers no vision of any sort into what he intends to do if — God forbid! — he gets re-elected on Nov. 3.

How in the name of political illusion does this guy pull it off?

I am left to agree with others’ conclusion, which is that Donald Trump has created a cult of personality among Republican faithful voters.

I listened to former national security adviser John Bolton’s interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz in which Bolton said Donald Trump is “not a conservative Republican” and that Trump doesn’t adhere to any discernible political philosophy other than what benefits him politically.

The Trump cult of personality has co-opted a once-great political party and turned into something none of what remains of the GOP establishment recognizes. Even the “real Republicans” who serve in elected office seem smitten by the cult.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Donald Trump promised to shake up the establishment when he ran for president in 2016. He has delivered on that promise, even as so many other campaign pledges have face-planted along the way.

It appears that the shakeup has produced this continuing levitation among the hard-core faithful of Trump’s base.

It gives me pause when I consider whether Joe Biden actually can defeat this fraudulent politician. I am hoping for all I am worth that we can send this clown packing.

No desire to ‘salute’ such horror

Yes, by all means look at this picture.

The message was posted on Facebook I presume by someone who opposes the takedown of Confederate memorials. The text is spot on … until we get to the last line.

Auschwitz stands as a grim reminder of humankind’s cruelty. It doesn’t glorify anything or anyone. Nor do any of the other memorials scattered throughout Europe that take note of the Holocaust and the evil that produced it.

Therefore, I still stand with those who oppose the glorification of the American Civil War and the Confederate States of America’s secession from the Union to fight to preserve slavery.

Those who fly the Confederate flag do so by and large to celebrate what the CSA did, which was to commit treason against the federal government and to bring on the bloodiest conflict in American history.

My wife and I went to Germany in 2016. We stayed with friends in Nuremberg. I had the chance to tour the Documentation Center in the city where Nazi and Japanese leaders were put on trial for crimes against humanity. Our friend in Nuremberg told us that Germans do not fly the swastika to celebrate what the Nazis did; nor do they salute picture of Adolf Hitler. They have erected or preserved these structures to remind the world — and themselves — of the horror that humanity is capable of bringing to itself.

I never will accept the notion that the Confederacy, the Civil War and the reason for fighting it should stand as proud symbol of our nation’s “heritage” and “history.” Sure, keep the statues — but place them in museums and tell the world about the evil they represent.

Toss in ‘hate’ to replace ‘heritage’ and ‘history’

So much for the “heritage” and “history” argument for flying the Confederate flag.

Let’s consider “hate” as well, shall we?

NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, the only African-American driver among the top tier of drivers in the popular sport, recently led the call for NASCAR to remove the Confederate flag from its events. NASCAR listened and issued an order banning the flag that is the symbol of the Confederacy, the group of states that seceded from the Union in 1861 and went to war with the U.S. of A. They went to war because they wanted to preserve states’ rights to sanction the enslavement of human beings.

Not all of NASCAR’s base of fans is happy with the removal of the flag. They disagree that it symbolizes racism, that it merely reflects people’s respect for their “heritage” and the “history” of the nation.

Well, what do you suppose happened over the weekend?

Someone got into Wallace’s garage at a Southern track and left a noose. Hmm. Heritage and history … my a**!

You know what the noose represents. It represents hate in a raw, despicable form.

Let’s quit the crap about the Confederate flag symbolic importance to people’s heritage and the nation’s history. The flag represents a disgraceful chapter in America’s story.

Bolton joins line of national security advisers in trashing POTUS

James Mattis pounded Donald Trump, saying he is intentionally seeking to divide the nation.

John Kelly said the nation needs to do a better job of assessing the character and competence of those who seek elective public office.

John Bolton says Donald Trump is unfit for public office and says he endangers our national security by looking first at his re-election chances and how any decision affects them.

Mattis and Kelly are former Marine Corps generals; Mattis served as defense secretary and Kelly served as homeland security secretary and then White House chief of staff. Bolton is a former U.N. ambassador and a longstanding conservative foreign policy hawk.

These are just the latest in a long line of national security officials who once worked for Trump. What do they have in common? They are trashing a sitting U.S. president. They are telling us that Donald Trump is dangerous, uninformed, unwilling to become informed.

Let’s not forget, too, that Rex Tillerson, the former secretary of state, once called Trump a “fu**ing moron.”

As I look at a reasonably big picture, I see an executive government branch in a state of absolute chaos and pandemonium. This is all a function of a president who now wants to win a second term. My goodness! There can be no way in the world we should allow this to continue.

And I can say that even while setting aside that the Nitwit in Chief has committed at least two impeachable offenses and should have been convicted in that Senate trial that acquitted him.

God help us if this clown wins the upcoming election!

Why the sparse crowd in Tulsa? Here’s a thought or two

Donald J. “Blame Placer in Chief” Trump was quick to lay out some excuses for the poor showing at his big-time campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla.

He blamed the media; he blamed Democrats for putting out “fake news” about the pandemic. I have a couple of other thoughts to ponder.

One is that Oklahomans and others who thought to attend got cold feet because of the coronavirus pandemic that is still sickening and killing Americans each day. They decided to heed the warnings of medical experts who said an indoor rally with thousands of folks packed in next to each presented too great a risk.

The other is that just maybe Donald Trump’s shtick is wearing out. I listened to parts of his rant. I didn’t hear a single new initiative. I didn’t hear him offer a single fresh idea of where he wanted to lead the country in a second term. Trump didn’t offer anything that sounded like a vision for the future.

No, instead he regurgitated almost the entire story line from the 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton. He just changed the name from “Clinton” to “Biden,” as in Joe Biden, the presumed 2020 Democratic Party presidential nominee.

It well might be that the Trump “base” has grown weary of the tired rant that keeps pouring forth from the guy who promised to “tell it like it is,” that he would “drain the swamp” and that “I, alone” can repair what he said ails the nation.

He skulked off of Marine One after it landed on the White House lawn after the rally looking like he’d been rode hard and put up wet. Indeed, reports have surfaced today about how Trump is “furious” with the turnout and he just can’t find enough people to blame for the fact that the  presidency under his watch has been exposed as a fraud.

We can all rest assured that Donald Trump will keep looking for others to blame for the miserable shortcomings he has revealed since pilfering the presidency.

KKK = Confederate flag

I cannot let this photo stand without offering a brief comment about the juxtaposition of two key elements this picture contains.

Look at the fellow gesturing. He is a Ku Klux Klansman demonstrating in 2017 in Charlottesville, Va., the site of that terrible riot that killed a young woman protesting against the Klan, neo-Nazis and assorted white supremacists.

Now, look at the flags flying behind him. Do you see a familiar pattern? It’s the Confederate flag, the piece of cloth that some Americans want to keep displaying in public places because it “symbolizes heritage” and is a “piece of American history.”

It seems to be lost on those pro-Rebel flag folks that the KKK stands with that flag because of what it represents: the maintaining of slavery in states that seceded from the Union in 1861 and launched the Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history. Then again, maybe it isn’t lost on them at all!

The Confederate flag represents the very thing that the moron seen in this picture snapped by the New York Post represents.

It represents oppression, which my reading of history tells me caused our founders to create this nation in the first place, to live in a place free of the kind of oppression symbolized by the Confederate flag.

Spare me, then, the clap-trap about “history” and “heritage.”

Human rights, Mr. POTUS?

John Bolton’s scathing memoir about his time as national security adviser to Donald John “Numbskull in Chief” Trump is full of information and disclosures that have become part of the common knowledge that many Americans already have about the president of the United States.

It does have at least one new element that I want to examine briefly.

Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” discusses how China’s leadership told Trump about its plans to build concentration camps to house about 1 million Muslims in China. Trump’s reaction was, in effect, “No sweat, guys. You do what you gotta do.”

That paints an amazingly vivid picture of one of Trump’s many failings as a world leader. He doesn’t give a damn about human rights. He lavishes praise on strongmen. Trump speaks to the leadership qualities of the likes of North Korea’s murderous tyrant Kim Jong Un; he, of course, admires Soviet strongman Vladimir Putin; he touts the strength of Turkey’s Reccip Erdogan.

What do they all have in common? They are dictators who imprison their countrymen and women. In Kim’s case, he starves them while building a nuclear arsenal to go along with a massive conventional military machine.

Has Trump ever questioned publicly the plight of those who live under the iron fist of any of these individuals? Has he ever condemned them for their failure to acknowledge the human rights that we all have?

Now we hear this revelation about Trump giving China a pass on erecting concentration camps to suppress a religious minority. It comes from Bolton’s book, a tome I have suggested is nothing more than a money-maker for the former national security adviser.

I just felt the need to suggest that Bolton’s book tells us as well that Donald Trump’s interest in human rights and in the condition of his fellow travels is, well … non-existent.

Shameful.

Trump trots out flag-burning non-starter

Donald Trump’s mediocre campaign rally today produced few talking points, but one of them does surface.

He said from the podium in Tulsa, Okla., that anyone who burns Old Glory should be arrested, charged and if convicted sent to jail for a year.

Huh? Earth to The Donald: The Supreme Court has settled that one. It said that burning the Stars and Stripes in a political protest is protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is, according to the court, a legitimate form of protest against government policy.

I agree with Trump on one point only: Anyone who burns a flag in my presence is not going to win me over to whatever point of view they are espousing. I hate the act and am repulsed by it. However, it’s a legit form of protest that the nation’s founders protected when they wrote the First Amendment.

Then again, political reality never gets in Trump’s way when he’s trying to ignite the cheers of his fans at political rallies.

Commentary on politics, current events and life experience